Logistics Firms Research Articles

The role of supply chain finance in third-party logistics industry: a case study from China

ABSTRACTThis research aims to explore how third-party logistics (TPL) firms with different strategic orientations gain competitive advantage through market practices. The study also aims to determine the role of supply chain finance (SCF) in the process. We adopt a multiple case study methodology to conduct interviews with five Chinese TPL firms chosen as representatives of diverse TPL firm types. The findings suggest that the roles of SCF vary in firms with different orientations. Scale-oriented firms gain competitive advantage through market exploitation practices. They view SCF as an optional tool to achieve their goal of meeting customer needs through enhancing the benefits of their market exploitation practices. In comparison, scope-oriented firms view SCF as a key business sector to improve their financial performance. They gain competitive advantage through market exploitation practices, which is enabled by SCF.

Raising opportunities in strategic alliance by evaluating efficiency of logistics companies in Vietnam: a case of Cat Lai Port

The current context of Vietnam is that Vietnam is a developing country whose geographical shape is long and dynamic. Its logistics is also in the way of development and promising to have good potential. However, lack experience and technology, small and fragmented operation, fierce price competition among local enterprises, domination from foreign logistics giants are that factors that may hinder the growth of the local sector. It is then believed that cooperation among local firms could promote integration of the supply chain, making it more productive and so increase competitiveness of the industry. The study was conducted to evaluate the efficiency of Vietnamese transportation and logistics firms using Malmquist Productivity Index, crafting a clearer picture of how these firms performed in terms of technical efficiency and innovation. Cat Lai Port being a key role in the industry was taken as a case to analyse strategic alliance opportunities using data envelopment analysis and Grey forecasting. Research findings indicate that half of the samples experienced efficiency progress, half experienced performance regress; most of efficiency improvement came from innovation. The study also found that strategic alliances between Cat Lai Port and some firms potentially improve these firms’ efficiency.

Optimising truckload operations in third-party logistics: A carbon footprint perspective in volatile supply chain

With government and customers driving third-party logistics seeking opportunities to improve operation efficiencies and mitigating carbon emissions in the supply chain, third-party logistics firms have been striving to improve their truckload utilization and vehicle routing operations, especially in emission-regulated countries and volatile business environment. Traditional literature has focused on either truckload utilization or vehicle routing operations but seldom integrating carbon emission mitigation in their daily trucking operations. This paper delineates the operation review of three third-party logistics firms in Hong Kong and develops an organisation-based carbon emission measurement metrics for logistics operations. The truckload utilization and routing performance are reviewed, followed by a correlation analysis on the truckload utilization against truck capacity, loading volume, fuel consumption, truck size, travelling distances and number of destinations. An integrated carbon-driven multi-criteria model is developed achieving carbon emission reduction initiatives, time and distance cost penalty, minimizing number of trucks, and improving truck utilization. The integrated mathematical model has been developed into a simulation system which has been tested with evaluated results. The mathematical model is enhanced for the set of cargo items and vehicle fleet with additional factors of arrival time slots and weight. The model assists traffic planners to reduce cargo planning time and optimize the truckload operations. Further development will be focused on adding the dimensions of pallet loading operations and exception rules for customer loading requirements.

Penetrating Malaysian Logistics Market: The Perspective of Korean Logistics Companies

Since a large number of global logistics firms successfully created global value addition based on high growth rate and lucrative profits, the logistics industry has been seen as a growth engine for the nations. Now, ASEAN is transforming into the world’s factories instead of China based on huge foreign direct investment (FDI), rich natural resources and cheap labor costs. From the perspective of Korean logistics firms, the rise of the ASEAN can be seen as new market opportunities. With the aforementioned importance of the ASEAN market, the purpose of this study is to investigate ways of how Korean logistics companies (especially small and medium sized logistics companies) can effectively penetrate Malaysian logistics markets that have rapid growth rates. Therefore, this study analyzes the important factors to penetrate the Malaysian logistics market from the perspective of Korean logistics companies using the SWOT-AHP approach. The results of this study indicate that excellent logistics infrastructure (S5) is the most important factor when Korean logistics companies penetrate the Malaysian logistics market. Based on the results of the analysis, this paper proposes some strategies and policy suggestions.

Country Effects on Managerial Practices in Transportation Area: Evidence from Russia and Germany

The competitiveness of individual companies is related not only to their own characteristics, but also to the institutional and economic characteristics of the home countries of these companies. How the business environments of countries affect the results of applying management practices in different companies is a complex research issue, as managerial practices have many characteristics. Nevertheless, Russian enterprises have to use new technologies to increase competitiveness in the world market. We analysed both the sector of transportation where geographic closeness is a key indicator of competition, and transportation facilities where incremental costs and savings can be implemented to build variables of the market structures. The research sample includes 210 specialized logistic firms with variation of ownership structure and collateral agreements. We have examined firms in two markets: Russian and German ones. The analysis is based on the data from 7 Russian regions, and 6 German federal states. We have found that the quality of managerial practices — estimated by using a new survey instrument — is strongly linked with commercial ratios such as a rate of fail to deliver and a rate of consumer satisfaction. A high level of competitiveness is demonstrated by a greater number of companies in the same region. We have found that this is positively correlated with increased quality of managerial capabilities. This correlation is reinforced when we quantify the number of local firms with local logistic infrastructure. This paper reveals that the increasing the effectiveness of managerial practices are due to the characteristics of the country of origin. The results allow to develop recommendations for policy-makers to improve the business environment.

Testing Cash Flow Based Agency Costs: an Application on Logistics Firms

Firmaların sıklıkla karşılaştığı sorunlardan birisi de temsil sorunudur. Temsil sorunu; firmanın sahipleri (asil) ile firmanın yöneticileri (vekil) arasındaki çıkar çatışmalarından kaynaklanmakta olup söz konusu problemin ortaya çıkardığı maliyetleri tespit etmek firmalar açısından büyük önem taşımaktadır. Çalışmada Borsa İstanbul (BIST) da Ulaşım, Depolama ve Taşımacılık Alt Sektöründe işlem gören lojistik firmalarının temsil maliyetlerinin tespit edilmesi amaçlanmıştır. Hem gelişmiş hem de gelişmekte olan ülkelerde stratejik bir sektör olan lojistik sektörü firmaları üzerine 2013q1-2017q4 yılları için panel veri analizi uygulanmıştır. Yapılan analizler sonucunda bağımsız değişkenlerden Tobin Q oranı ile bağımlı değişken firmaya serbest nakit akımları arasında anlamlı pozitif bir ilişki bulunmuştur. Bağımsız değişkenlerden borçlanma ve aktif büyüklüğü ile bağımlı değişken firmaya serbest nakit akımları arasında negatif yönlü anlamlı bir ilişki belirlenmiştir. Bağımsız değişkenlerden risk ile bağımlı değişken firmaya serbest nakit akımları arasında ilişki bulunamamıştır.

Obesity and the food system transformation in Latin America.

SummaryThe Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region faces a major diet-related health problem accompanied by enormous economic and social costs. The shifts in diet are profound: major shifts in intake of less-healthful low-nutrient-density foods and sugary beverages, changes in away-from-home eating and snacking and rapid shifts towards very high levels of overweight and obesity among all ages along with, in some countries, high burdens of stunting. Diet changes have occurred in parallel to, and in two-way causality with, changes in the broad food system – the set of supply chains from farms, through midstream segments of processing, wholesale and logistics, to downstream segments of retail and food service (restaurants and fast food chains). An essential contribution of this piece is to marry and integrate the nutrition transition literature with the literature on the economics of food system transformation. These two literatures and debates have been to date largely ‘two ships passing in the night’.This review documents in-depth the recent history of rapid growth and transformation of that broad food system in LAC, with the rapid rise of supermarkets, large processors, fast food chains and food logistics firms. The transformation is the story of a ‘double-edged sword’, showing its links to various negative diet side trends, e.g. the rise of consumption of fast food and highly processed food, as well as in parallel, to various positive trends, e.g. the reduction of the cost of food, de-seasonalization, increase of convenience of food preparation reducing women’s time associated with that and increase of availability of some nutritious foods like meat and dairy. We view the transformation of the food system, as well as certain aspects of diet change linked to long-run changes in employment and demographics (e.g. the quest for convenience), as broad parameters that will endure for the next decades without truly major regulatory and fiscal changes.We then focus in on what are the steps that are being and can be taken to curb the negative effects on diet of these changes. We show that countries in LAC are already among the global leaders in initiating demand-related solutions via taxation and marketing controls. But we also show that this is only a small step forward. To shift LAC’s food supply towards prices that incentivize consumption of healthier diets and demand away from the less healthy component is not simple and will not happen immediately. We must be cognizant that ultimately, food industry firms must be incentivized to market the components of healthy diets. This will primarily need to be via selective taxes and subsidies, marketing controls, as well as food quality regulations, consumer education and, in the medium term, consumers’ desires to combine healthier foods with their ongoing quest for convenience in the face of busy lives. In the end, the food industry in LAC will orient itself towards profitable solutions, ie those demanded by the broad mass of consumers.

A decomposition-based iterative optimization algorithm for traveling salesman problem with drone

This study investigates a new delivery problem that has emerged after the attempts of several e-commerce and logistics firms to deploy drones in their operations to increase efficiency and reduce delivery times. In this problem, a delivery truck that carries a drone on its roof serves customers in coordination with a drone. The drone is considered to complement the truck due to its cost-efficiency and ability to access difficult terrains and to travel without exposure to congestion. This study presents an iterative algorithm that is based on a decomposition approach to minimize delivery completion time. In the first stage of the proposed methodology, the truck route and the customers assigned to the drone are determined. In the second stage, a mixed-integer linear programming model is solved to optimize the drone route by fixing the routing and the assignment decisions that are made in the first stage. Beginning with the shortest truck route, the assignment and the routing decisions are iteratively improved. The solution times of our algorithm are compared with the solution times of the state-of-the-art formulations that are solved by CPLEX. The results demonstrate that our algorithm yields shorter solution times for the instances that we generated with the specified parameters. An optimization-based heuristic algorithm, which obtains solutions for medium-sized instances, is developed by reducing the feasible search area.

E-commerce risk management in the logistics Industry: An Integrative Analytical Framework for Understanding Consumer Behavior

Early studies have paid particular attention to the control of alliances to cover the risks of differing objectives between firms in an exchange relationship (Nooteboom, Berger, & Noorderhaven, 1997). It has been suggested that the use of formal control mechanisms may enhance a trusting relationship by narrowing down the domain and severity of risk (Poppo & Zenger, 2002). Hence, for effective alliance performance, partner firms need to manage this risk adequately by understanding the conjoint roles of trust and control. This paper aim to develop a comprehensive and integrative framework of trust, control, and risk in the context of logistics industry. Trust and control are inextricably interlinked with risk in supply chain. Therefore, to understand how logistic firms can effectively reduce and manage this risk, we need to examine the inter-relationships between trust, control, and risk. This study aims to identify the e-commerce risk reduction approaches-minimizing relational risk through goodwill trust, behavior control, and social control, while minimizing performance risk through competence trust, output control, and social control.

Information Technology and Its Effect on Performance of Logistics Firms in Nigeria

Information Technology and Its Effect on Performance of Logistics Firms in Nigeria

The Relation between Use of Information Technologies in Logistics Firms, Customer Satisfaction and Business Performance

The Relation between Use of Information Technologies in Logistics Firms, Customer Satisfaction and Business Performance

Operational Risk and the Performance in Logistic Firms: The Case of ANCOM Berhad Malaysia

Operational Risk and the Performance in Logistic Firms: The Case of ANCOM Berhad Malaysia

A Study on Awareness of HRM Practices and its Implementation in Small and Mid-level Logistics Firms

A Study on Awareness of HRM Practices and its Implementation in Small and Mid-level Logistics Firms

Identification of factors affecting quality of multimodal transportation for containerised export in Indian scenario

This work explores the perception of actors in multimodal transportation to arrive at the significant factors influencing the quality of multi-modal transportation for containers from the India. The existing literature focuses on a particular issue, or some issues, such as cost, time or infrastructure related to logistics or concerns of a firm in maintaining efficacy of logistics operations. In this research, an attempt has been made to compile and analyse the major relevant issues and challenges of the primary stakeholders associated with multimodal transportations. The responses of the stakeholders, represented by the managers of the firms, in the logistics chain have been obtained through semi-structured interviews. The responses have been analysed qualitatively, and the summary of the results have been vetted by the respondents. The customers' perspectives have been further obtained by analysing their comments on the social networking websites of logistics firms. These e-comments have been analysed using SentiStrength, data mining software. The results of the analyses reveal the factors affecting the perception of stakeholders about the quality of multimodal transportation.

Crossdocking Insights from a Third Party Logistics Firm in Turkey

Crossdocking Insights from a Third Party Logistics Firm in Turkey

Identification of factors affecting quality of multimodal transportation for containerised export in Indian scenario

This work explores the perception of actors in multimodal transportation to arrive at the significant factors influencing the quality of multi-modal transportation for containers from the India. The existing literature focuses on a particular issue, or some issues, such as cost, time or infrastructure related to logistics or concerns of a firm in maintaining efficacy of logistics operations. In this research, an attempt has been made to compile and analyse the major relevant issues and challenges of the primary stakeholders associated with multimodal transportations. The responses of the stakeholders, represented by the managers of the firms, in the logistics chain have been obtained through semi-structured interviews. The responses have been analysed qualitatively, and the summary of the results have been vetted by the respondents. The customers' perspectives have been further obtained by analysing their comments on the social networking websites of logistics firms. These e-comments have been analysed using SentiStrength, data mining software. The results of the analyses reveal the factors affecting the perception of stakeholders about the quality of multimodal transportation.

The effect of acquisition moves on income, pre-tax profits and future strategy of logistics firms

The effect of acquisition moves on income, pre-tax profits and future strategy of logistics firms

Modele funkcjonowania i rozwój terminali intermodalnych na przykładzie województwa wielkopolskiego

Artykuł przedstawia wyniki badań z lat 2013–2016 dotyczących transportu intermodalnego w Wielkopolsce, kładąc szczególny nacisk na modele rozwoju i funkcjonowania terminali intermodalnych. Ponadto zwrócono uwagę na bariery rozwoju terminali, jakie napotkają ich operatorzy lub potencjalni inwestorzy. W Wielkopolsce można zaobserwować koegzystencję czterech modeli funkcjonowania transportu intermodalnego. W pierwszym z nich terminal stanowi ekspozyturę kluczowych portów morskich. Rolą terminala jest zapewnienie przedłużenia łańcucha logistycznego portu w regionach śródlądowych. W drugim modelu transport intermodalny staje się poszerzeniem portfolio usług przewoźników towarowych. Trzeci model działalności to uzupełnienie oferty parku przemysłowego czy specjalnej strefy ekonomicznej. Ostatni model to terminale lokowane w pobliżu transportochłonnych zakładów przemysłowych. Badania dowiodły, że wszystkie cztery modele znajdują miejsce na rynku usług logistycznych. Koniecznością jest wypracowanie modelu wsparcia terminali intermodalnych ze środków unijnych: czy inwestować w tworzenie jednego, dwóch dużych terminali w regionie czy sieci kilku lub kilkunastu mniejszych. Oprócz działań inwestycyjnych ważny jest też wzrost świadomości przedsiębiorców oraz przedstawicieli administracji publicznej.

Productivity of Czech logistic firms: quality orientation, entrants and multinationals

Abstract The paper analyses logistics industry in Czech Republic and analyzes clusters and groups of one hundred companies that were active in the market in 2014. Analysis is based on the economic theory of endogenous growth and technological spillovers of multinational firms. They have the know-how and technology, which makes them more productive than local firms which tries to catch up the leaders and try to get as much knowledge as possible. This paper contributes to this theory. Key findings for this transitional economy is that quality certification is not beneficial for labor productivity and earnings, there are differences among multinational firms in terms of output efficiency and they are on average more productive than local firms, older firms are less productive than younger, but entrants are not more profitable than older firms.

Default Risk and Firm Value of Shipping & Logistics Firms in Korea

ABSTRACT As shipping and logistics industry is one of the core industries in Korea, the volume was ranked in the fifth highest in the world. However, shipping and logistics industry of Korea has suffered from default risk since Global Financial Crisis in 2008. This study examines the relationship between the default risk, as measured by the Altman K-Score, and firm value, as measured by the Return on Assets (ROA), of shipping and logistics firms in Korea and compares the impact of default risk on firm value between good financial health firms and poor financial health firms. As the trends of KScores over a ten-year periods, shipping and logistics firms in Korea register weak-to-moderate financial healthy rage. We find that Altman K-Score is significantly linked with firm value and also higher performing firms as measured by the ROA exhibit higher financial health as measured by KScore. Although nine years have been passed since Global Financial Crisis 2008, Korean shipping and logistics industry is still under the financial depression. This study proposes that systematic financial alert system of Korean shipping and logistics industry should be required to decrease default risk reflecting significance of Korean economy.